Say the Word (19 page)

Cara grinned and waggled her fingers at me as I passed by the costume fitting area, no doubt having witnessed my arctic encounter with Sebastian. If I were a lesser woman, I’d have contemplated spitting in her latte. As it was, I’d just order one with whole milk instead of nonfat — that would be enough to set her off in a caloric panic of epic proportions.

I smiled as I headed for the Starbucks in the lobby.

The victory from my latte-trickery was short lived and, unfortunately, the day spiraled even further downward from then on. Not only did Cara insist that I bring her another latte with the correct milk, she told two of her model friends that I’d be their designated coffee and errand girl for the entirety of the Decades project. The three of them expressed unmasked delight in rejecting the lattes and macchiatos I’d procured each time I returned with a new cardboard tray of drinks, sending me back down to the lobby four separate times before noon.

I became fast friends with Greg, the barista; every time I reappeared in the lobby he’d grin sympathetically and tell me a coffee-themed joke to lighten my spirits. Who knew caffeine humor could be so sexual?

When I was finally released from Starbucks duty, I found Angela and quickly discovered that despite her short stature, she was a force to be reckoned with. In fact, she was kind of a self-important bitch — one of those people who thought the world would cease to turn if they failed to show up for work one day.  She didn’t even look up from her clipboard when I asked her for an assignment.

“See those issues?” she asked, gesturing at the mountain of magazines sitting on the conference room table across the room.

I nodded.

“Some of the designers flipped through them for historical inspiration earlier this week and scanned the images they liked onto their computers. Now the magazines are a jumbled mess. They need to be reorganized and carted back to the stockroom. Go through each issue and catalogue it by month and year. You’ll find boxes, string, and a label-maker over by the wall,” she said, her brow furrowed as she scribbled a note on her clipboard. “Tie the 12 issues from each year together, ordered by month, with a piece of string. Then stack the years together by decade. Each decade gets stored away in a box.” She spoke rapidly, flipping through her notes as she fired off instructions. “And don’t forget to label the boxes by decade.”

“Alright, thanks.”

“Oh, and — what was your name again?”

“Lux.”

“Well, Lux,” she said, finally looking up from her notes to examine me. Whatever she saw, she evidently found lacking, if the slightly distasteful crinkling of her nose was any indication. “Make sure you finish them before you leave tonight. Men will be coming to take the boxes back to storage first thing tomorrow morning.”

I nodded and walked away, figuring any assignment was better than an eternity of coffee runs for Cara and her snooty posse.

My mistake. I might not be a math genius, but even I should’ve realized that organizing 100 years worth of magazines — in which each year has approximately 12 issues — is equivalent to a hell of a lot of work.

Unfortunately, I had this realization a little too late — pretty much the exact moment I reached the conference room table and saw the extent of back-stocked magazines littering the tabletop and stacked in messy piles inside the ten large cardboard boxes beneath the table. The stack sitting on the tabletop was in a similar state of disarray, seemingly having been piled without order or organization. It looked like a pack of rabid toddlers had been looking through the stacks, rather than a group of professional designers.

Joy.

Four hours later, my stomach was rumbling in protest after skipping lunch, my eyes were tired from ceaselessly reading issue dates, my back was aching, and my fingertips were coated in a slightly dusty residue from flipping through century-old pages. With a growing sense of dismay, I glanced from the watch at my wrist to the still largely unorganized pile of magazines. Work would be over in an hour or so, and people would soon start to filter out of the office. Seven boxes sat on the ground to my left — organized, labeled, and ready for pickup. But to my right, nearly four hundred remaining issues were still piled in a haphazard fashion.

I sighed and got back to work, subtly slipping my phone out of my purse to text Desmond.

Stuck at work. Can’t make it to dinner. Sorry.

Poor Desmond. This was
the third time in a row I’d cancelled on him. He deserved better, but I could honestly say that — this time at least — it wasn’t my choice. I also texted Simon, warning him that I’d probably miss happy hour. If I failed to show up without any explanation, he’d be on the phone with the police trying to issue an Amber Alert within the hour, regardless of the fact that I was a legal adult.

The thought of Simon cheered me enough to jump back into my task. I picked up my pace, becoming so absorbed that the rest of the office faded away and the next time I looked up, I was nearly the last one left on the floor. A few costume designers conversed by the fitting area, and Angela was seated at one of the workstations, her cellphone clutched in one hand and her clipboard in the other, but other than that, everyone else had gone home for the day. I hadn’t seen Sebastian since our terse encounter this morning, and I thought that was probably for the best. If we were going to attempt to be civil and professional, he’d likely steer clear of me from now on.

I tried to be okay with that, reminding myself that I was here only to serve my sentence and move on. I shouldn’t have expected him to treat me with anything but disdain. After all, I was here to be punished — and on his orders, no less.

It was already well past five, and magazines from two whole decades remained on the table before me — at least another hour’s worth of work, maybe two. Once Angela — and her watchful glare — left for the night, followed soon after by the two designers, I was alone on the floor and could finally collapse into one of the conference table’s leather swivel chairs. The lights, programmed on automatic timers, dimmed considerably after their departure, but I didn’t bother to find the switch. I was far too comfortable to move.

I began to pick through the issues spread across the table, thinking as I did so that the 1990s grunge fashion era was better left unresurrected in
Luster
history. I stretched my arms above my head and arched my back, letting out a low groan as my cramped muscles found some relief. Hunching over a table for the last five hours had pulled my muscles tighter than a bowstring.

When I’d worked the kinks out of my spine, I made short work of pulling the clip from my hair, the intensity of my headache ebbing as soon as the heavy locks tumbled free. My fingers combed through the strands, then moved to rub my temples in an attempt to eliminate the ache altogether.

The chime of the arriving elevator froze my hands in place, and my head swung immediately toward the sound.

I gasped soundlessly as the doors slid open and Sebastian stepped through them. He took several strides into the room, the dim lighting no doubt lending the impression that he was alone here. His expression, for once, was unguarded. With his brow furrowed and his eyes trained on the floor, he appeared distressed, as though he were waging an internal war within his mind.

I was captivated by his sudden appearance — so much so, I didn’t realize how awkward it would be when he inevitably reached the conference table and found me sitting there, practically drooling at him.

Shit. He was closing in — barely fifteen feet away.

Uncomfortably, I cleared my throat.

“Um, hi,” I called loudly, wincing at the sound of my own voice as it echoed through the empty room.

Sebastian’s head snapped up, his eyes going wide as he saw me at the table. He started and took a half step backwards — I couldn’t help but wonder if he was considering making an abrupt about-face and heading for the elevators to escape me — but eventually stilled and seemed to resolve himself to stay. Straightening his shoulders to full height, he held himself as though he were about to do battle with a formidable enemy.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice quieter this time but my words flowing out in a torrent. “I didn’t know you’d be back here tonight. I’m supposed to finish these before I leave, but I’ll just come back early tomorrow morning and do it.” I pushed my chair back and stood, shuffling the messy magazines into a singular stack as fast as possible and grabbing an empty box from the floor by my feet.  “I’ll be out of your hair in just a minute,” I babbled on, not meeting his eyes. “I didn’t know how long this would take. I’m sorry.”

I was repeating myself, filling the silence with everything I could think of, as if that could somehow reduce the awkward strain of the moment. I lifted the stack of magazines and was preparing to drop them into the empty box when he spoke.

“Don’t.” His voice was soft, and much closer than I’d anticipated — he’d moved toward the table at some point during my nervous monologue. I didn’t dare look up to see just how near he now stood. “It’s fine, Ms. Kincaid.”

“It’s okay,” I murmured shakily, eyes still trained on the magazines clutched in my shaking hands. “I’ll be gone in just a minute.”

“Ms. Kincaid,” Sebastian said, so close I could practically feel the heat emanating from his body. “I said
stay
.”

A tremble moved through my entire body at his words. I had no idea what expression was playing out across my face — fear, attraction, embarrassment? — I just prayed the dim lighting would be enough to conceal my emotions.

A frozen moment passed between us. I didn’t move, I didn’t speak, I didn’t even
breathe
, for fear of shattering the stillness. I could feel the weight of his gaze on me, but kept my own eyes aimed down at the table.

I’d been right, at least partially, this morning when I’d thought that each interaction with Sebastian would be like walking through a live minefield. I’d just forgotten to consider that for the perilous journey through an expanse of armed bombs, I’d also be blindfolded and spun in several dizzying circles first. And right now, at this moment, I had the feeling that one of my feet was poised millimeters above the earth, a hairsbreadth from triggering a fatal detonation that would claim both our lives.

I’m not sure why, but Sebastian chose to diffuse the bomb. He moved away.

I felt his jacket sleeve brush against my arm as he passed close by my side, heading for the opposite end of the conference room table, and a shaky exhale of relief escaped my lips. I couldn’t help myself — I raised my eyes to watch as he walked and took the seat directly across from me at the head of the table. We were now separated by about twenty feet, which should’ve eased my mind but in actuality set me even more on edge. He, on the other hand, seemed completely unbothered, flipping open a file folder I hadn’t seen clutched in his hand and leafing through its contents with composure.

When he suddenly looked up and caught me staring, I dropped my eyes back to the table and took my seat. I found some small comfort in the fact that he couldn’t see me where I sat behind the tall stack of magazines, but remained largely uneasy as the minutes began to tick by in silence.

I tried to focus on my work, but sorting, stacking, and labeling only captured so much of my attention. The rest was
honed on the man across the table — and on the fact that with each stack of magazines I organized and boxed, the wall concealing me from his view began to shrink. Within minutes, I could once again see Sebastian over my dwindling pile, but I resolutely tried to keep my eyes — and thoughts — from straying to him.

A half hour passed in silence.

Then another.

I began to fidget in my seat, needing some kind of outlet for the building tension in the room. Tucking my hair behind my ears, crossing and uncrossing my legs on
five-minute intervals, and tapping one heeled foot against the tiled floor, I was on my way to a mental breakdown from the sheer strain of not looking at him.

And the more I tried not to think about him, the harder it was.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. My freshman year of college I’d taken Psych 101, and my professor had made my class recreate a famous study on thought suppression. In the experiment, half my peers — myself included — were instructed not to think about a white bear for five minutes. In the same time period, my professor told the other half of the class they could think about the bear as many times as they wanted. Every time a thought of the bear popped into one of our minds, we were supposed to ring the small bell we’d each been given.

Would you believe that my group, who were supposed to be suppressing our thoughts about that damn bear, ended up ringing our bells three times more than the other group?

It was basic human nature. The more forbidden something — someone — was, the more we wanted it.

It became almost painful, not looking at him. Like I might die if I didn’t simply tilt m
y head up and meet his eyes to ensure he was still sitting there, across the room, and not some twisted figment of my imagination. My hands began to move faster, stacking magazines in neat piles and tying them together with string. My foot tapped an ever-quickening tempo against the marble, matching the rapid beat of my heart. And finally,
finally
, when the table before me was clear, when each magazine had been categorized and labeled and stacked away neatly in its proper place…